Eddie Chambers - Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain

Eddie Chambers is a professor in the Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches art history of the African Diaspora. Born in Wolverhampton to Jamaican immigrant parents, and having first been an artist, he spent the early 1980s working with a new generation of Black-British artists, whose highly charged practice reflected a range of pertinent social realities and cultural aspirations. He went on to curate many exhibitions, including Black Art: Plotting the Course, History and Identity, and Frank Bowling: Bowling on Through the Century. He is the author of Black Artists in British Art: A History Since the 1950s (I.B.Tauris, 2014).

To my mom, my sister, my brothers, and the memory of my dad, all of whom are a part of this story.

In Roots & Culture, Eddie Chambers offers a deeply sensitive and profoundly engaged portrait of a historically unique and distinctive cultural-political transformation that will undoubtedly shape the way we henceforth think about the contemporary cultural and political landscape of Black-British modernism.

David Scott, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of Graduate Studies, Columbia University

Roots &
Culture

EDDIE CHAMBERS

Published in 2017 by

I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd

London New York

www.ibtauris.com

Copyright 2017 Eddie Chambers

The right of Eddie Chambers to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

International Library of Cultural Studies 40

ISBN: 978 1 78453 616 9 HB

978 1 78453 617 6 PB

eISBN: 978 1 78672 074 0

ePDF ISBN: 978 1 78673 074 9

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Contents

List of Illustrations

Tippa Irie, Complain Neighbour (UK Bubblers, 1985) record sleeve. Courtesy of VP Music Group Inc. Photograph by Tim OSullivan

West Indian immigrants arriving at Victoria Station, London. The photograph was taken for the feature by Hilde Marchant, Thirty-Thousand Colour Problems, Picture Post, Hultons National Weekly, 9 June 1956.

November 1927, Marcus Garvey being deported from the US via New Orleans, Louisiana. It was reported that several hundred Black people stood in the rain for hours to bid farewell to him. CSU Archives/Everett Collection

An Afro-Caribbean Christian church group holds an evangelical meeting in Derby town centre on a Sunday afternoon, 1970. Photograph by Homer Sykes/Getty Images

Linton Kwesi Johnson, Poet of the Roots, sounds music magazine cover, 2 September 1978. Photograph copyright Dennis Morris all rights reserved

27 August 1973: Fans of the West Indies cricket team celebrate their win over England at Lords cricket ground, London. Photograph by Leonard Burt/Central Press/Getty Images

Construction workers boring through rock with tripod drills during the construction of the Upper Miraflores, Panama Canal, Everett Collection

A group of West Indian men enjoying a game of snooker in a colonial hostel in Leaman Street, London. The photograph was taken for a feature by Robert Kee, Is There a British Colour Bar? Picture Post: Hultons National Weekly, 2 July 1949. Photograph by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Getty Images

Men outside Brixton Labour Exchange, 1955, Daily Mail/Rex Features

School children, Birmingham, November 1965, Tony Prime/Associated Newspapers

London, a young West Indian Arsenal supporter, cover of the Observer magazine, 28 November 1971, Black Britons, written by Jann Parry, with photographs by Romano Cagnoni. Pages 1725. Getty Images, Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 2016

A demonstration in Notting Hill protesting against the harassment of Black people, organised by the Black Defence Committee, 31 October 1970. Photograph by Ian Showell/Keystone/Getty Images

Portrait of Haile Selassie I held aloft in a crowd, Jamaica, 1966, on the occasion of Haile Selassies visit to the country. Photograph by Lynn Pelham/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

English reggae band Steel Pulse in Birmingham, April 1982. Left to right are Basil Gabbidon, David Hinds, Selwyn Brown, Ronnie McQueen, Colin Gabbidon, and Steve Nisbett. Photograph by Kevin Cummins/Getty Images

27 April 2008; Indio, CA, USA; Poet Linton Kwesi Johnson reads during the 2008 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, at the Empire Polo Club. Photograph by Vaughn Youtz/ZUMA Press

March Against Apartheid in Trafalgar Square, 2 November 1986, Photograph by Photofusion/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Schoolchildren protesting during the Soweto uprisings in South Africa, 1976. Photograph by Peter Jordan

3 October 1977 in King Williams Town, South Africans attending the burial ceremony of Steve Biko. Biko, born in King Williams Town, was the founder and leader of the Black Consciousness Movement and the first president of the all-Black South African Students Organization. He was detained four times in the last few years of his life, and died in police custody as a result of a beating received on 12 September 1977. Photograph STF/AFP/Getty Images

Rastafarians and Dreads, with prints of drawings by Ras Daniel Heartman, Notting Hill Gate, London in the 1970s. Janine Wiedel Photolibrary

Locals walk past a building destroyed during the second night of rioting in Brixton, 13 April 1981. Photograph by Graham Turner/Keystone/Getty Images

21 April 1981: Protesters outside County Hall as the inquest opens into the 13 Black people killed in the January 1981 fire in Deptford, South London. The fire aroused anger within the local community and beyond, with allegations of a police cover-up of a racial attack. Photograph by Central Press/Getty Images

Black Peoples Day of Action, March 1981, passing the site of the gutted house in which a fire claimed 13 young Black lives, Graham Wood/Daily Mail/Rex Features

Black Peoples Day of Action, March 1981, protesting against the house fire in Deptford that claimed 13 young Black lives, Graham Wood/Daily Mail/Rex Features

Guyana-born British artist Frank Bowling in a studio, London, 1962. Elements of his art theory are painted on the wall behind him. Photograph by Tony Evans/Getty Images

9 June 1970: Anti-racism demonstrators gather in Wolverhampton in protest against Enoch Powells controversial immigration policy with anti-Powell banners. Mr Enoch Powell was in Wolverhampton as part of his campaign for the forthcoming election. Photograph by Leonard Burt/Central Press/Getty Images

Black Art an done: An Exhibition of Work by Young Black Artists exhibition poster, Eddie Chambers, Dominic Dawes, Andrew Hazel, Ian Palmer, Keith Piper, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 927 June 1981

The West Indians Are Here!: Exuberance of the West Indians, as expressed by the captain, Clive Lloyd, and fellow slip fielder Gordon Greenidge, Wisden magazine cover, May 1980. Photograph by Patrick Eager, reproduced by kind permission of John Wisden & Co Ltd.